'Big Freeze' Hint For Future?

Many maybe skeptical, looking out of their windows tomorrow morning and seeing a white blanket covering the landscape, whether global warming actually exists. Fair enough, from the title you expect the climate to get warmer and with temperatures hitting, at the lowest -10.C, you would understandably say there is definitely no warming happening here. This is why the term global warming is not an effective heading to describe what irreversible and disastrous changes this phenomenon is doing to the world's climate.

Being a firm believer in global warming, it is hard to put your points of view across when trying to explain to others with little knowledge on the matter, when it is snowing outside. Instead it is perhaps more important that people need to be able to understand the bigger picture of the causes of global warming, to which is the main lookout of concern; it quickens climate change.

There is no denying the world, more importantly highlighting the fact the Arctic and Antarctic, is getting warmer; but luckily the Arctic is the majority of frozen water. Put ice cubes into a cup, for example, and the ice will melt in the cup without overflowing it. Brilliant, you might say. Then why is there so much hype about the ice melting when sea oceans actually will not rise at all? The problem arrives where land based ice falls into the sea. Imagine one more ice cube on top of the others in the cup. If this melts, undoubtedly the water will overflow the glass. There are two distinct points on the Earth, to which there is enough land ice to raise sea levels by six metres (20 feet), flooding major populated cities like Bangkok and Shanghai, whilst the Netherlands will be completely under water.

The Earth's ocean has one large current running through it, like an escalator belt. As the current passes through the Arctic, the cold water is heated by the current coming from the equator, to which this newly formed hot air is blown across the whole of Europe, giving us our temperate climate; hotter in the summers, whilst colder in the winters. However on the east coast of Greenland lays an ice sheet to which if fully melted will no longer be able to contain the land based ice. This will fall and melt in the sea, causing the rising of sea levels up to six metres. Not only that, but because this land based ice is freshwater, it will disrupt the salt water current; ultimately there will be a point in the near future where we will receive no more temperate climate, from no hot air, forcing the whole of Europe into a continental ice age.

Therefore is this treacherous weather going to become a regular occurrence? If governments are not prepared for it, schools will be shut for months on end, roads will be even deadlier than that over the next few days, thousands of families will experience a stage of shortage of supplies who cannot reach supermarkets and the destruction of millions of species of flowers, insects and plants who will not be able to stand this regular climate. So what does that mean in a nutshell? Poor education for every child, a significant increase in the amount of deaths on the road, starving families and the extinction of species.

It would be foolish for governments to invest drastically in keeping the UK running from a snowfall as, unlike countries like Sweden, currently it only snows heavily once every year which lasts at most for a week. Instead it makes far more sense to prevent the huge catastrophe of the Greenland ice sheet melting.

This is only one of the reasons why the government needs to focus a lot more on climate change as the most important issue for the future. Conservatives are too short-term to see this disaster, Labour, whilst it gives the impression of caring, achieves nothing at the Copenhagen meeting. If they cared that much about the environment and could see the massive impact of climate change will have, they would have been far more forceful to bring about some sort of a deal, and in not doing so, have possibly become the cause for many deaths in the near future as a direct result.

Climate change is a cycle, and we can keep up with it, even if we quicken it up. But too many people are either too ignorant, or completely ignore it as so they do not want to change their extravagant lifestyles, to see the future. The most frustrating thing for me is, the action is too slow and not progressing anywhere near fast enough to what we need to reach. We will lose the ability to adapt to the environment and when that comes the amount of regret millions of people will have for not doing anything to stop it, will be nothing compared to the anger of these words: 'I told you so'.